


Just the Way You Are

by Mizmak



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: First Kiss, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26953357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizmak/pseuds/Mizmak
Summary: They had been very drunk, that much Aziraphale remembered.The rest of it—including the love confession—not so much.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 96





	Just the Way You Are

Of _course_ he loved Crowley. Aziraphale had realized that a millennium or two ago—who was counting? He had known it when Crowley had to go off for a month to a place on the other side of the Earth from the angel’s current assignment, and it wasn’t very long into the too-long month that Aziraphale found himself lost without him. And when Crowley returned, and they celebrated together, and laughed together, and just _were_ together, he realized he never wanted to feel that lost again.

So of course he loved Crowley. Which did not in any way mean that a declaration of that love while under the influence of fermented beverages was in _any_ way acceptable. 

Autumn had rolled around in that remarkable year when they had saved the world. On a particularly lovely crisp day, a day after a night of overindulgence, they went to lunch at his favorite sushi restaurant, seated side by side at the counter. Well, _he_ was lunching. Crowley hadn’t ordered anything except a bottle of sake. 

Everything seemed ever so nice until Crowley told Aziraphale about the words he had supposedly blurted out the night before.

“I said _what?”_

“You said you loved me,” Crowley said simply. 

“Last night. At the bookshop.”

“Yup.”

Aziraphale stared at the dragon roll on his plate. He had been looking forward to eating it, and now he just wanted to run into the restroom and crawl out its window and take a taxicab home and bury his head under a few dozen pillows. “While I was _drunk?”_

“Immensely intoxicated, Angel.” Crowley reached over with his chopsticks to spear one of the dragon rolls. He popped it into his mouth. “Mmm. Not bad.”

“Are you _certain_ that’s what I said?” He felt appalled. Of course he had planned to declare his love, but not in such an utterly undignified manner. “Weren’t you just as drunk as I was?”

“Potted, plastered, and three sheets to the wind. Didn’t seem to affect my hearing, though. Not like it seems to have affected your memory.”

“Well, really.” He could not have been that inebriated. Aziraphale tossed down the entire contents of his sake cup, and decided that whoever designed sake cups to be so absurdly small had been missing a few brain cells. “I am an _angel_. Angels do not go around confessing love in drunken stupors. It simply isn’t _proper_.”

Crowley shrugged. “Didn’t know love had to be all prim and proper. Kind of defeats the whole purpose, if you ask me. Are you going to eat any of that?”

Maybe his friend was making this up, perhaps it was some sort of wily demonic scheme. “Do you have _proof?”_

“Remember that security camera you installed after that string of Soho burglaries last year?” Crowley grinned. “Had a little look at the tape when I came to pick you up for lunch, while you were in the back messing about with your bowtie.” He poked a chopstick at the sartorial item in question. “It looks absolutely perfect, by the way.”

Aziraphale ordered another bottle of sake.

Crowley ate one of the yellowtail nigiri off Aziraphale’s plate. 

“Order your own, why don’t you?” Aziraphale immediately regretted sounding snippy. He was clearly too rattled. This whole love confession revelation was simply too upsetting. Where were his soft tones? He was an _angel_. “Why are you eating so much, my dear?”

“Dunno. Maybe finding out my best friend loves me made me unusually _peckish_.” 

Aziraphale sighed. “Yes, about that. I was drunk. We were both drunk. One’s mental faculties are not at one’s best when one is—what was that amusing phrase you used—‘three blankets to the wind’?”

“ _Sheets_ , Aziraphale. ‘Three _sheets_ to the wind.’”

“Hm. Sheets. Yes, well, I am attempting to convey an important point, which is that I do not _remember_ saying anything of that nature last night, and I do wish you had not brought it up. It has _upset_ me.” He downed another miniscule cup of sake. 

“Fine.” Crowley tossed his chopsticks down. “I guess you didn’t really mean it, then, is that it?”

“What? No! I mean, yes! I did mean it!” _Oh, dear_. Other customers in the restaurant were turning their heads towards them. They were making a _scene._ “But I can’t say it to you like _that_. Not when I can’t even remember. Not when I was four sheets to the breeze!”

“Right, well, say it better then!” Crowley picked up his sake cup and waved it about at the restaurant. “Right here, right now.”

“Certainly not!” More people were looking at them, and the sushi chef behind the counter had raised one imperious eyebrow. “This is far too public a place. Such sentiments ought to be spoken in private.” He stared at his plate, which was littered with half-nibbled pieces of dragon roll. He sighed.

“Whatever.” Crowley downed the contents of his sake cup, and instantly refilled it.

Aziraphale didn’t care for his too-casual, nonchalant tone. They could hardly have a meaningful conversation about love when neither the place, the time, nor the sentiments felt romantic. 

Then he realized that he’d neglected to ask a rather important question.

“Crowley….”

“Hm?”

Aziraphale coughed a little, clearing his throat. “Did you…that is…er…did you say it _back?”_

Both Crowley’s eyebrows rose in disbelief. “Of course I did!”

“Ah. Well.” How wonderful! If only he remembered it. He really had no idea what to say in response to an admission of such magnitude. None of the books he had perused on good manners had an entry for _How the Gentleman Should Reply to a Forgotten Love Confession._ “Um, thank you?”

_“Thank you?!”_ Crowley’s jaw dropped. “Seriously? That’s all you’ve got?”

Aziraphale’s reading choices skewed strongly towards nonfiction, and the last romantic novel he’d read had been written in 1811. He had a feeling Crowley would not approve of the sort of subtle sentiments expressed therein. “I shall find the right words, and the proper time and place, and when I do, you shall obviously be the first to know.” He wanted to go home. Enough was enough. “In the meantime, do please forget about that unfortunate incident, will you?”

Crowley stared at him for a bit too long, and then he shrugged. “Ngk.” He yanked Aziraphale’s plate of sushi over to his part of the counter, and set to finishing it off with uncharacteristic gusto.

Drunken confessions, indeed.

He had _standards._

*

Crowley dropped him off at the bookshop, and then tore off down the street, having explained that he needed to be alone for a while, but that he would be back that evening, because Aziraphale needed to figure out his priorities, thank you very much. 

“Harrumph,” Aziraphale said aloud to his empty bookshop. “Telling me what I need to do. The nerve.”

The bookcases, not entirely unexpectedly, did not answer him.

He set about examining the fiction shelves. Perhaps if he delved into some romantic novels written after the Regency era. Aziraphale started pulling titles down until he had a hefty stack of works from Victoria’s long reign, and then he settled into his armchair to dip into them in search of romantic declarations spoken at the right and proper place and time.

*

Naturally, they wound up getting drunk again.

Aziraphale had his nose deep in a book when Crowley turned up at the bookshop that evening, with take-out containers bearing the logo from the Italian café down the street.

“That’s how you figure things out, is it?” he asked as he set the food down on the coffee table. “Reading?” He crossed to the kitchenette to fetch plates and forks, and wine glasses. “Makes sense. Humans figured this stuff out long before we did.” Crowley set everything down and then returned to the kitchen to fetch several bottles of wine.

Aziraphale closed his book and set it aside. “That smells delicious.” 

“Blackened chicken with fettuccini alfredo.” Crowley tossed his sunglasses on the table. He sprawled on the sofa and got busy putting a heaping portion onto Aziraphale’s plate. He handed it over before getting a smaller amount for himself. “Glass of wine?”

“Thank you, yes.” Aziraphale dug into the creamy noodles and the savory chicken. Crowley handed over a glass of chardonnay, an excellent accompaniment. 

They ate quietly, and for the first time since the Unfortunate Incident, Aziraphale felt relaxed in Crowley’s company. Silly, really, for them to have misunderstandings of any sort. They had been friends for six thousand years. He sighed. Hardly a simple friendship, though, not with Heaven and Hell to deal with. All the reading he’d done that afternoon had informed him about human relationships, and had instilled many varied expressions of a romantic nature in his mind, yet somehow, none of them came close to explaining how he felt about his enemy, his friend, his sole companion among the multitudes—his love—nor when and where to best invoke such a declaration.

“You’re wrong,” he said between bites. “The humans haven’t figured it out at all.”

Crowley looked up from his meal. “No?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Pity.” Crowley looked at him with piercing amber eyes, concern etched across his face.

“Don’t worry, my dear. I’ll get there.” 

“I can wait for you, Angel.” Crowley raised his glass. “To love.”

Aziraphale clinked his against it, and drank deeply.

*

By midnight they had emptied nearly all the bottles in the back of the bookshop, and they were both six sheets to the wind.

_Possibly not a good idea_ , Aziraphale thought as he watched Crowley tilt over sideways on the sofa, head hitting a pillow, thank goodness. He soon heard soft little hissing snores. His dear friend had passed out, and he looked to be in a terribly uncomfortable position, one leg off the sofa entirely, one arm trapped beneath him. 

Aziraphale closed his eyes and focused on refilling wine bottles until he sobered enough to deal with the unconscious spiritual entity in human form cluttering up his sofa.

He rose from the armchair in which he’d been sitting for hours and hours. Rather tiring, that. He crossed to the sofa to pat Crowley on the shoulder. “There, there, dear fellow. Let’s get you somewhere more comfortable.”

As he carried his friend upstairs to his bedroom, Aziraphale yawned several times. He didn’t usually feel so sleepy, but all that reading, and the heavy food he’d eaten, and all that sitting and drinking, had taken its toll.

And so when he got Crowley into pyjamas with an angelic miracle, and when he’d got him settled comfortably into the bed, Aziraphale did not hesitate for more than two seconds before changing into his own pyjamas and climbing in beside him. 

He fell sound asleep within a minute, with snatches of Victorian novels dancing through his head.

*

Something touched his face.

Fingers. Fingers were caressing his cheek, and in the dim half-awake drowsiness of his mind, Aziraphale heard Crowley whisper, “Hey, there Angel.”

Dark. Warmth. Was that an arm lying on his chest? Aziraphale battled sleep, trying to wake fully, but somehow, sleep won that fight. “Mmph,” he murmured, his mind stuck on a setting of Very Vague with a touch of Supremely Confused.

His head felt full of passages from nineteenth century novels, of disconnected and misremembered words about love. Aziraphale tried to pin a few down in the hope of responding to Crowley with something…anything…

“Transfix me…” Was that his mouth moving? Hm. Where was his brain? “Last dream of my soul…” 

He felt soft lips kiss his forehead. _Wake up…must wake up…something important going on here…._ “Mm,” he found his lips working again through the thick wool blanket of sleep trying to drag him down into oblivion. “Always love…will always be loved…against reason…against hope….” _Awfully warm and cozy and drowsy in here…wherever this is…_ “Whenever you look up, there I shall be….” _So far away, why I am so far away…_ “Reader, I married him…” 

_“What?!”_

Crowley’s shout abruptly succeeded in rousing Aziraphale from the depths of slumber. _Oh, dear_. He shook his head, trying to clear out the Victorian cobwebs. “Um…what was I saying?”

Crowley was sitting up now, facing him, and no longer cuddling or stroking him in that delightful fashion. “You were spouting romantic twaddle which I was enjoying a great deal until it turned into _Jane Eyre_.” 

_“Jane Eyre?”_ Yes, that had been one of the tomes he had skimmed through earlier. Aziraphale frowned. “Since when have you read _Jane Eyre?”_

“I haven’t read Jane bloody Eyre. It was on the telly last week.” Crowley crossed his arms. “Not terribly original, Angel.”

“I see.” Aziraphale felt embarrassed again. Here he was in the right place for love confessions, and most certainly the right time, and he had messed it up again by not using his own words. “So sorry.”

“Think I liked you better when you were still sleeping.”

“Now, now, my dear, don’t be so mordant.” He couldn’t help it if his mind didn’t function well when only partly awake. 

“I was not being—” Crowley blinked. “ _Mordant?_ What the Hell—Heaven—Earth does that even _mean?”_

“Caustic, of course. Sharply critical, sarcastic, from Old French for ‘biting’, a perfectly felicitous word, if you ask me.” He felt quite wide awake now, and in full possession of his considerable faculties. 

“Oh, is that right?” Crowley threw the covers aside. “Bugger felicity—I’m off out of here.”

“Wait!” Not only had he spoiled quite a lovely bit of cuddling, and not only had he failed yet again in declaring his love for his friend in the manner which it fully deserved, he had managed to unduly vex said friend as well. “Please don’t go.” He reached for Crowley, grasping his arm. “I did like having you here beside me.”

Crowley hesitated. “So did I.” He pursed his lips. “You know, I mean, waking up with _you_ beside _me_. Whatever.” He leaned over to place a soft kiss on the top of Aziraphale’s head. “But look out the window, Angel. It’s way past breakfast.”

Aziraphale looked at the window in question. Brilliant sunlight shone through a crack in the drapes. _Drat_. He did feel hungry, come to think of it. “Ah. Well. Suppose we ought to get up, then.”

“Don’t fret.” Crowley stretched, and then got out of bed. He gazed fondly at Aziraphale. “You’ll get another chance.” He snapped his pyjamas into his street clothes, and walked out the door.

_Another chance._ A drunken confession had been too undignified. He would have to stay sober. His sleepy confessions had been absurd. Definitely needed to be fully awake. Aziraphale sighed as he sat up, and prepared to face a new day, as he pondered once more what to do.

_Another chance…_ He still felt determined in his belief that a declaration of love was meant to be _special_ , not something to be tossed off without a thought. So yes, there would be another chance today, and this time he was not going to make any mistakes. 

Or so he dearly hoped.

*

After dressing for the day, Aziraphale went downstairs to find Crowley sitting on the sofa, waiting for him. _Too soon_. “Did you want to go to breakfast with me, my dear?”

Crowley patted the cushion. “Come and sit here, why don’t you?”

Aziraphale warily sat down on the sofa beside him. What did the fellow have in mind? “Why?”

“I’m going to help you.”

“Not necessary.”

“Seems to me it’s necessary. Listen, you want the right setting and the right mood and your own words while not drunk and not half asleep, is that it?”

“Well, yes.” Crowley did have the gist of the issue in hand.

“Fine. Then let’s work it out together. How about a picnic?”

“There might be ants. Or rain. Or playful, romping dogs from the picnicking family nearby.”

“Maybe, maybe not, but all right. Dinner at the Ritz, over dessert, with champagne.”

“Too familiar. It’s quite romantic, I agree, but we go there all the time. Shouldn’t it be somewhere _special?”_

“A different classy restaurant that we’ve never been to?”

Honestly. Now he wasn’t even trying. “I did hope you had a better imagination than that.”

“Fine. I take it your ‘nowhere too familiar’ rule means we can’t go to St. James’s Park, either?”

“Precisely. Besides, we had a fight there once. Mustn’t sully the occasion with unhappy memories. Too fraught.”

“Bugger it. You’re making this too hard, Angel.” Crowley thrust himself off the sofa, and started pacing between it and one of the far bookcases.

“My apologies. It’s only the most important declaration I shall ever make in my eternal life.”

“How about my flat? You’ve only been there a couple of times.”

Aziraphale shivered, thinking about its stark décor, and those poor plants. “No offense, my dear boy, but how do you expect me to speak freely of the deepest affection when there are trembling, terrorized houseplants looking on?”

Crowley spun on his heel at the end of the bookcase. As he paced back towards the sofa, his brow furrowed. “Places in London are too familiar.” He came to a halt. “How about Paris?”

“My dear, that’s _too_ romantic. I couldn’t possibly live up to that level of expectation.”

_“Ngk.”_ He resumed pacing. At each turn, he had a new idea. “The beach. Find a quiet, secluded cove somewhere.”

“The last time I visited the shore, I wound up shaking sand out of my clothes for _weeks_.”

“When was that?”

“1848.”

“Right.” Pace, pace, _turn_. “A shady grove in the countryside, underneath a pear tree.”

Aziraphale got distracted. “Mmm. Pears….”

“Angel?”

“What? Oh, sorry. I might wind up eating all the pears, and forget all about you.” He felt a pang of guilt at his enjoyment of human food, though not for long.

Pace, pace, _turn and stop._ “On the top of an isolated hill, at night, underneath the stars.”

Aziraphale glanced at the calendar. “It’s October. Won’t it be chilly?”

“Right. How about a sun-dappled field of pink carnations with bluebirds sweetly singing over our heads and doves soaring about while a dozen adorable white bunny rabbits frolic at our feet.”

“Now you are being _mordant_ again. Really. What are you _thinking?”_

“I am thinking that you are being ridiculous! It’s not complicated!” Crowley strode back over to the sofa, standing above Aziraphale, gesturing wildly with his arms. “It doesn’t have to be a perfect, ideal, _proper_ declaration—it just has to come from your ridiculous angelic heart! Stop having ruddy standards! Stop being _fussy_. Just tell me you love me, you idiot!”

Aziraphale gaped at him. “Crowley! I am not an idiot!”

His friend had the decency to look contrite. “Sorry. How about a _lovable_ idiot?” 

Then he reached down to take Aziraphale by the arms, and unceremoniously lifted him off the sofa, and pulled him into a light embrace. “Come on, can’t you just _say_ it? Right here, right now?”

He waved a hand at the bookcases. “This is the best place. It’s your _home_ , and if you want it to be my home too, just say the word. Say the simplest of words in all the world. There isn’t a perfect time or a perfect setting or a perfect flight of fancy poetry for love, Angel. It’s here _all_ the time, it’s around us no matter _where_ we go.” 

He touched Aziraphale’s chest. “It’s in there.” He took hold of Aziraphale’s right hand, and brought it to his own chest. “It’s in _here_. I love you.” Crowley squeezed his hand, and gazed at him intently, yearningly. “Why does this have to be so hard?” He gulped, and Aziraphale saw moistness welling in Crowley’s eyes. “Do you not want to say it after all?” His voice broke a little. “Is that the real trouble—am I asking too much?”

Aziraphale felt tears forming in his own eyes. He shook his head, and pressed Crowley’s hand. Suddenly he did feel ridiculous. The longer Crowley gazed upon him with sheer adoration, the more ridiculous and even idiotic he felt. “I _do_ worry so about doing the right things in the right ways,” he said. “I suppose that does make me rather fussy.” He smiled. “And yet you love me anyway.”

Crowley smiled in return. “I love the way you are, Angel. I love that you care about making sure things are right. I love that you’re not messy or wild, that you don’t go flailing about with dramatic emotions—that’s _my_ job. You’d never drive too fast, Angel, and that’s the way I want you to be.”

He hugged Aziraphale tightly, then stepped back just a little. He stroked Aziraphale’s hair ever so gently. “You need to be there to stop me when I forget to hit the brakes in time. I need you to keep me steady. I need you to be my anchor when the storms threaten. I want you to find me whenever I’m losing my way, I want you to hold me when I’m out of control…and I need you to catch me whenever I fall.”

Aziraphale watched, amazed, as tears trickled down Crowley’s face, and he blinked, dazed, as his own tears fell warmly along his cheeks and touched his lips. 

“How did you just _say_ that…” Such astonishing words, at the right time—it had come so naturally. _I love the way you are_ …

Could he not do the same? Yet this was so dreadfully important, and important things ought to be thought over thoroughly, and given careful consideration, and fussed over lest you got them wrong—though how, he belatedly wondered—how could you get love wrong? He had been overthinking _love_ , of all things. 

“I understand now,” he said softly. “There doesn’t have to be a ‘right place’ to speak these words, for everywhere you are is the perfect place.” _Speak from the heart, not the head_. “And I don’t need the proper time to tell you how I feel, because every moment we’re together is sublime.” 

He didn’t really need anything, Aziraphale knew now, except the perfect person—who stood before him ever so patiently, ever so true.

“I love you,” he said. He touched Crowley’s cheeks, he touched the wet streaks there, and said, again, “I love you,” before tilting his head just the right way to let their lips meet in a kiss that was absolutely perfect, even with the slight salty taste from their joined tears, perhaps even more so because of that. Aziraphale felt a glorious release from centuries of heartfelt yearning for what he could not have, and he felt joyfully entranced not only by the love he had now—both the love that he bestowed, and the love that was entrusted to him—but by the promise of all the love still yet to come.

When that first kiss ended, he calmly led Crowley to the sofa, where they sat down together, and quickly wound up entangled in another embrace. Aziraphale found it convenient to perform a frivolous miracle which enlarged and widened the sofa, nearly to bed proportions, so that they could stretch out comfortably. 

“Thought you wanted breakfast,” Crowley said as he nuzzled Aziraphale’s neck, trailing light kisses there.

“Eventually.” Aziraphale caressed Crowley’s chest through the thin layer of his shirt. “Not that hungry at the moment.”

Crowley kissed the hollow of his throat. “Mmm. Good.” He raised his head to look into Aziraphale’s eyes. “So we’ve sorted out love, then, have we?”

“I believe we have.” 

“Most important declaration you’ve ever made in your eternal life, you said.”

“Yes, it was.”

Crowley kissed the tip of his nose. “Same here. I love you, Aziraphale.” 

Simple words.

All the treasure of the world encompassed in three simple words. 

Which they spoke to each other once more, twice more, a hundred times more—and Aziraphale never had to worry again, from that day forward, about getting his declarations of love just right.


End file.
